X" 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


JAMES    RUSSELL   LOWELL 
2ln 


BY 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER  AND  BROTHERS 
1892 


Copyright,  1892,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 
All  rights  reserved. 


IN  the  letter  of  Augustus  Graham,  the  found- 
er of  the  Brooklyn  Institute,  dated  July  4,  1848, 
accompanying  the  gift  of  the  property  to  the 
Board  of  Trustees,  he  says:  "  I  give  this  sum 
with  the  injunction  to  your  Board  .  .  .  that 
one-half  of  the  net  income  from  the  buildings 
apply  to  the  increase  and  keeping  in  order  of 
the  free  library  of  the  Institute,  the  residue  of 
said  income  to  be  applied  in  part  to  the  ex- 
pense of  an  address  to  be  delivered  on  the  even- 
ing of  the  22d  of  February,  the  birthday  of 
George  Washington,  on  the  character  of  that 
great  man,  or  of  some  other  benefactor  of 
America." 

Mr.  Lowell  had  hoped,  should  his  health 
permit,  to  deliver  the  address  on  the  22d  of 
February,  1892.  Upon  his  death,  on  the  I2th 


3031080 


of  August,  1891,  it  was  decided  that,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  provision  of  Mr.  Graham's  letter, 
the  annual  address  of  this  year  should  be  a  dis- 
course in  commemoration  of  Mr.  Lowell. 
March  i,  1892. 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 


HE  birthday  of  Washington 
not  only  recalls  a  great  his- 
toric figure,  but  it  reminds 
us  of  the  quality  of  great 
citizenship.  His  career  is 
at  once  our  inspiration  and  our  rebuke. 
Whatever  is  lofty,  fair,  and  patriotic  in 
public  conduct,  instinctively  we  call  by 
his  name ;  whatever  is  base,  selfish,  and 
unworthy,  is  shamed  by  the  lustre  of  his 
life.  Like  the  flaming  sword  turning  ev- 
ery way  that  guarded  the  gate  of  Para- 
dise, Washington's  example  is  the  beacon 
shining  at  the  opening  of  our  annals  and 
lighting  the  path  of  our  national  life. 


8  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

But  the  service  that  makes  great  cit- 
izenship is  as  various  as  genius  and  tem- 
perament. Washington's  conduct  of  the 
war  was  not  more  valuable  to  the  country 
than  his  organization  of  the  Government, 
and  it  was  not  his  special  talent  but  his 
character  that  made  both  of  those  serv- 
ices possible.  In  public  affairs  the  glam- 
our of  arms  is  always  dazzling.  It  is  the 
laurels  of  Miltiades,  not  those  of  Homer, 
or  Solon,  or  Gorgias,  which  disturb  and  in- 
spire the  young  Themistocles.  But  while 
military  glory  stirs  the  popular  heart,  it  is 
the  traditions  of  national  grandeur,  the 
force  of  noble  character,  immortal  works 
of  literature  and  art,  which  nourish  the 
sentiment  that  makes  men  patriots  and 
heroes.  The  eloquence  of  Demosthenes 
aroused  decadent  Greece  at  least  to  strike 
for  independence.  The  song  of  Koerner 
fired  the  resistless  charge  of  Lutzow's 
cavalry.  A  pamphlet  of  our  Revolution 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  9 

revived  the  flickering  flame  of  colonial 
patriotism.  The  speech,  the  song,  the 
written  word,  are  deeds  no  less  than  the 
clash  of  arms  at  Cheronea  and  Yorktown 
and  Gettysburg. 

It  is  not  only  Washington  the  soldier 
and  the  statesman,  but  Washington  the 
citizen,  whom  we  chiefly  remember. 
Americans  are  accused  of  making  an  ex- 
cellent and  patriotic  Virginia  gentleman 
a  mythological  hero  and  demi-god.  But 
what  mythological  hero  or  demi-god  is  a 
figure  so  fair?  We  say  nothing  of  him 
to-day  that  was  not  said  by  those  who 
saw  and  knew  him,  and  in  phrases  more 
glowing  than  ours,  and  the  concentrated 
light  of  a  hundred  years  discloses  nothing 
to  mar  the  nobility  of  the  incomparable 
man. 

It  was  while  the  personal  recollections 
and  impressions  of  him  were  still  fresh, 
while  as  Lowell  said,  "  Boston  was  not 


10  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

yet  a  city  and  Cambridge  was  still  a 
country  village,"  that  Lowell  was  born  in 
Cambridge  seventy-three  years  ago  to- 
day. His  birth  on  Washington's  birth- 
day seems  to  me  a  happy  coincidence, 
because  each  is  so  admirable  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  two  forces  whose  union  has 
made  America.  Massachusetts  and  Vir- 
ginia, although  of  very  different  origin  and 
character,  were  the  two  colonial  leaders. 
In  Virginia  politics,  as  in  the  aristocratic 
salons  of  Paris  on  the  eve  of  the  French 
revolution,  there  was  always  a  theoretical 
democracy;  but  the  spirit  of  the  State 
was  essentially  aristocratic  and  conserva- 
tive. Virginia  was  the  Cavalier  of  the 
Colonies,  Massachusetts  was  the  Puritan , 
and  when  John  Adams,  New  England  per- 
sonified, said  in  the  Continental  Congress 
that  Washington  ought  to  be  General, 
the  Puritan  and  the  Cavalier  clasped 
hands.  The  union  of  Massachusetts  and 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL.  II 

Virginia  for  that  emergency  foretold  the 
final  union  of  the  States,  after  a  mighty 
travail  of  difference,  indeed,  and  long 
years  of  strife. 

The  higher  spirit  of  conservatism,  its 
reverence  for  antiquity,  its  susceptibility 
to  the  romance  of  tradition,  its  instinct 
for  continuity  and  development,  and  its 
antipathy  to  violent  rupture ;  the  grace 
and  charm  and  courtesy  of  established 
social  order,  in  a  word,  the  feminine  ele- 
ment in  national  life,  however  far  from 
actual  embodiment  in  Virginia  or  in  any 
colony,  was  to  blend  with  the  masculine 
force  and  creative  energy  of  the  Puritan 
spirit  and  produce  all  that  we  mean  by 
America.  This  was  the  consummation 
which  the  Continental  Congress  did  not 
see,  but  which  was  none  the  less  forecast 
when  John  Adams  summoned  Washing- 
ton to  the  chief  revolutionary  command. 
It  is  the  vision  which  still  inspires  the  life 


12  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

and  crowns  the  hope  of  every  generous 
American,  and  it  has  had  no  truer  inter- 
preter and  poet  than  Lowell.  Well  was 
he  born  on  the  anniversary  of  Washing- 
ton's birth,  for  no  American  was  ever 
more  loyal  to  the  lofty  spirit,  the  gran- 
deur of  purpose,  the  patriotic  integrity ; 
none  ever  felt  more  deeply  the  scorn  of 
ignoble  and  canting  Americanism,  which 
invest  the  name  of  Washington  with  im- 
perishable glory. 

The  house  in  which  Lowell  was  born 
has  long  been  known  as  Elm  wood,  a 
stately  house  embowered  in  lofty  trees, 
still  full,  in  their  season,  of  singing  birds. 
It  is  one  of  the  fine  old  mansions  of  which 
a  few  yet  linger  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Boston,  and  it  still  retains  its  dignity  of 
aspect,  but  a  dignity  somewhat  impaired 
by  the  encroaching  advance  of  the  city 
and  of  the  architectural  taste  of  a  later 
day.  The  house  had  its  traditions,  for  it 


MASSACHUSETTS 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  13 

was  built  before  the  Revolution  by  the  last 
loyal  Lieutenant-governor  of  Massachu- 
setts, whose  stout  allegiance  to  the  Brit- 
ish crown  was  never  shaken,  and  who  left 
New  England  with  regret  when  New  Eng- 
land, also  not  without  natural  filial  re- 
gret, left  the  British  empire.  It  is  a  le- 
gend of  Elmwood  that  Washington  was 
once  its  guest,  and  after  the  Revolution  it 
was  owned  by  Elbridge  Gerry,  a  signer  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  who 
occupied  it  when  he  was  Vice-president. 
Not  far  from  Elmwood,  Lowell's  life- 
long home,  is  the  house  which  is  doubly 
renowned  as  the  headquarters  of  Wash- 
ington and  the  home  of  Longfellow. 
Nearer  the  colleges  stands  the  branching 
elm — twin  heir  with  the  Charter  Oak  of 
patriotic  story — under  which  Washington 
took  command  of  the  revolutionary  army. 
Indeed,  Cambridge  is  all  revolutionary 
ground,  and  rich  with  revolutionary  tra- 


14  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

dition.  Lexington  common  is  but  six 
miles  away.  Along  the  West  Cambridge 
road  galloped  Paul  Revere  to  Concord. 
Yonder  marched  the  militia  to  Bunker 
Hill.  Here  were  the  quarters  in  which 
Burgoyne's  red  coats  were  lodged  after 
the  surrender  at  Saratoga.  But  peaceful 
among  the  storied  scenes  of  war  stands 
the  university,  benign  mother  of  educated 
New  England,  coeval  with  the  Puritan 
settlement  which  has  given  the  master 
impulse  to  American  civilization. 

The  American  is  fortunate  who,  like 
Lowell,  is  born  among  such  historic  scenes 
and  local  associations,  and  to  whose  cra- 
dle the  good  fairy  has  brought  the  gift  of 
sensitive  appreciation.  His  birthplace 
was  singularly  adapted  to  his  genius  and 
his  taste.  The  landscape,  the  life,  the  fig- 
ures of  Cambridge  constantly  appear  both 
in  his  prose  and  verse,  but  he  lays  little 
stress  upon  the  historic  reminiscence.  It 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  15 

is  the  picturesqueness,  the  character,  the 
humor  of  the  life  around  him  which  at- 
tract him.  This  apparent  indifference  to 
the  historic  charm  of  the  neighborhood 
is  illustrated  in  a  little  story  that  Lowell 
tells  of  his  first  visit  to  the  White  Mount- 
ains. In  the  Franconia  Notch  he  stopped 
to  chat  with  a  recluse  in  a  saw-mill  busy 
at  work,  and  asked  him  the  best  point  of 
view  for  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain. 
The  busy  workman  answered  :  "  Dun  no ; 
never  see  it."  Lowell  continues,  "too 
young  and  too  happy  to  feel  or  affect  the 
Juvenalian  indifference  I  was  sincerely 
astonished,  and  I  expressed  it.  The  log- 
compelling  man  attempted  no  justifica- 
tion, but  after  a  little  while  asked,  '  Come 
from  Bawsn?'  'Yes,'  with  peculiar 
pride.  'Goodie  to  see  in  the  vicinity  of 
Bawsn  ?'  '  Oh,  yes,'  I  said.  '  I  should 
like — awl  I  should  like  to  stan'  on  Bun- 
ker Hill.  You've  been  there  often,  like- 


l6  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

ly  ?'  'No-o,'  unwillingly  seeing  the  little 
end  of  the  horn  in  clear  vision  at  the 
terminus  of  this  Socratic  perspective. 
'  Awl,  my  young  fren'  you've  larned  now 
that  wut  a  man  kin  see  any  day  he  never 
does  see  ;  nawthin  pay,  nawthin  vally !'  " 
Lowell  entered  college  at  fifteen  and 
graduated  at  nineteen,  in  1838.  His  lit- 
erary taste  and  talent  were  already  evi- 
dent, for  in  literature  even  then  he  was 
an  accomplished  student,  and  he  was  the 
poet  of  his  class,  although  at  the  close  of 
his  last  year  he  was  rusticated  at  Concord, 
a  happy  exile,  where  he  saw  Emerson,  and 
probably  Henry  Thoreau  and  Margaret 
Fuller,  who  was  often  a  guest  in  Emer- 
son's house.  It  was  here  that  he  wrote 
the  class  poem  which  gave  no  melodious 
hint  of  the  future  man,  and  disclosed  the 
fact  that  this  child  of  Cambridge,  al- 
though a  student,  was  as  yet  wholly  un- 
influenced by  the  mofal  and  intellectual 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL.  17 

agitation  called  derisively  transcendent- 
alism. 

Of  this  agitation  John  Quincy  Adams 
writes  in  his  diary  in  1840 :  "A  young  man 
named  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  a  son  of 
my  once -loved  friend  William  Emerson, 
and  a  classmate  of  my  lamented  son 
George,  after  failing  in  the  every -day 
avocation  of  a  Unitarian  preacher  and 
school-master,  starts  a  new  doctrine  of 
transcendentalism  ;  declares  all  the  old 
revelations  superannuated  and  worn  out, 
and  announces  the  approach  of  new  rev- 
elations and  prophecies.  Garrison  and 
the  non-resistant  Abolitionists,  Brownson 
and  the  Marat  Democrats,  phrenology 
and  animal  magnetism  all  come  in,  fur- 
nishing each  some  plausible  rascality  as 
an  ingredient  for  the  bubbling  cauldron 
of  religion  and  politics."  There  could  be 
no  better  expression  of  the  bewildered 
and  indignant  consternation  with  which 

3 


18  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

the  old  New  England  of  fifty  years  ago 
regarded  the  awakening  of  the  newer 
New  England,  of  which  John  Quincy 
Adams  himself  was  to  be  a  characteristic 
leader,  and  which  was  to  liberalize  still 
further  American  thought  and  American 
politics,  enlarging  religious  liberty,  and 
abolishing  human  slavery.  Like  other 
Boston  and  Harvard  youth  of  about  his 
time,  or  a  little  earlier,  Charles  Sumner, 
Wendell  Phillips,  Edmund  Quincy,  Loth- 
rop  Motley,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  Low- 
ell seemed  to  be  born  for  studious  leisure 
or  professional  routine,  as  yet  unheeding 
and  unconscious  of  the  real  forces  that 
were  to  mould  his  life.  Of  these  forces 
the  first  and  the  most  enduring  was  an 
early  and  happy  passion  for  a  lovely  and 
high-minded  woman  who  became  his 
wife — the  Egeria  who  exalted  his  youth 
and  confirmed  his  noblest  aspirations;  a 
heaven-eyed  counsellor  of  the  serener  air 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  19 

who  filled  his  mind  with  peace  and  his 
life  with  joy. 

During  these  years  Lowell  greatly  im- 
pressed his  college  comrades,  although 
no  adequate  literary  record  of  the  prom- 
ise which  they  felt  survives.  When  he 
left  college  and  studied  law  the  range  of 
his  reading  was  already  extraordinarily 
large,  and  his  observation  of  nature  sin- 
gularly active  and  comprehensive.  His 
mind  and  memory,  like  the  Green  Vaults 
of  Dresden,  were  rich  with  treasures  accu- 
mulated from  every  source.  But  his  ear- 
liest songs  echoed  the  melodies  of  other 
singers  and  foretold  no  fame.  They  were 
the  confused  murmuring  of  the  bird  while 
the  dawn  is  deepening  into  day.  Partly 
his  fastidious  taste,  his  conservative  dis- 
position, and  the  utter  content  of  happy 
love,  lapped  him  in  soft  Lydian  airs  which 
the  angry  public  voices  of  the  time  did 
not  disturb.  But  it  was  soon  clear  that 


20  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

the  young  poet  whose  early  verses  sang 
only  his  own  happiness  would  yet  fulfil 
Schiller's  requirement  that  the  poet  shall 
be  a  citizen  of  his  age  as  well  as  of  his 
country. 

One  of  his  most  intimate  friends,  the 
late  Charles  F.  Briggs,  for  many  years  a 
citizen  of  Brooklyn,  and  known  in  the  lit- 
erary New  York  of  forty  years  ago  as 
Harry  Franco,  said  of  him,  with  fine  in- 
sight, that  Lowell  was  naturally  a  politi- 
cian, but  a  politician  like  Milton— a  man, 
that  is  to  say,  with  an  instinctive  grasp  of 
the  higher  politics,  of  the  duties  and  re- 
lations of  the  citizen  to  his  country,  and 
of  those  moral  principles  which  are  as  es- 
sential to  the  welfare  of  States  as  oxygen 
to  the  breath  of  human  life.  "  He  will 
never  narrow  himself  to  a  party  which 
does  not  include  mankind,"  said  his  friend, 
"  nor  consent  to  dally  with  his  muse  when 
he  can  invoke  her  aid  in  the  cause  of  the 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL.  21 

oppressed  and  suffering."  This  was  the 
just  perception  of  affectionate  intimacy. 
It  foretold  not  only  literary  renown  but 
patriotic  inspiration,  and  consequent  po- 
litical influence  in  its  truest  and  most 
permanent  form.  In  Lowell's  mind,  as  in 
Milton's,  as  in  the  spirit  of  the  great 
Dutch  revolt  against  Spain,  of  the  later 
German  defiance  of  Napoleon,  and  of  the 
educated  young  heroes  of  union  and  lib- 
erty in  our  own  Civil  War,  the  words  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  Hubert  Languet 
presently  glowed  with  quickening  truth : 
"  To  what  purpose  should  our  thought  be 
directed  to  various  kinds  of  knowledge 
unless  room  be  afforded  for  putting  it 
into  practice  so  that  public  advantage 
may  be  the  result."  It  was  not  a  Puritan 
nor  a  republican  who  wrote  the  words, 
but  they  contain  the  essential  spirit  of 
Puritan  statesmanship  and  scholarship 
on  both  sides  of  the  ocean. 


22  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

The  happy  young  scholar  at  Elmwood, 
devoted  to  literature  and  love,  and  un- 
heeding the  great  movement  of  public  af- 
fairs, showed  from  time  to  time  that  be- 
neath the  lettered  leisure  of  his  life  there 
lay  the  conscience  and  moral  virility  that 
give  public  effect  to  genius  and  accom- 
plishment. Lowell's  development  as  a 
literary  force  in  public  affairs  is  uncon- 
sciously and  exquisitely  portrayed  in  the 
prelude  to  Sir  Launfal  in  1848. 

"  Over  his  keys  the  musing  organist 

Beginning  doubtfully  and  far  away, 
First  lets  his  fingers  wander  as  they  list, 

And  builds  a  bridge  from  Dreamland  for  his  lay; 
Then  as  the  touch  of  his  loved  instrument 

Gives  hope  and  fervor,  nearer  draws  his  theme, 
First  guessed  by  faint  auroral  flushes  sent 

Along  the  wavering  vista  of  his  dream." 

In  1884-45  his  theme  was  no  longer 
doubtful  or  far  away.  Although  Mr.  Gar- 
rison and  the  early  abolitionists  refused 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  23 

to  vote,  as  an  act  sanctioning  a  govern- 
ment which  connived  at  slavery,  yet  the 
slavery  question  had  already  mastered 
American  politics.  In  1844  the  Texas  con- 
troversy absorbed  public  attention,  and  in 
that  and  the  following  year  Lowell's  po- 
ems on  Garrison,  Phillips,  Giddings,  Pal- 
frey, and  the  capture  of  fugitive  slaves 
near  Washington,  like  keen  flashes  leap- 
ing suddenly  from  a  kindling  pyre,  an- 
nounced that  the  antislavery  cause  had 
gained  a  powerful  and  unanticipated  ally 
in  literature.  These  poems,  especially 
that  on  "The  Present  Crisis,"  have  a 
Tyrtean  resonance,  a  stately  rhetorical 
rhythm,  that  make  their  dignity  of 
thought,  their  intense  feeling,  and  pictu- 
resque imagery,  superbly  effective  in  rec- 
itation. They  sang  themselves  on  every 
antislavery  platform.  Wendell  Phillips 
winged  with  their  music  and  tipped  with 
their  flame  the  darts  of  his  fervid  appeal 


24  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

and  manly  scorn.  As  he  quoted  them 
with  suppressed  emotion  in  his  low,  me- 
lodious, penetrating  voice,  the  white 
plume  of  the  resistless  Navarre  of  elo- 
quence gained  loftier  grace,  that  relent- 
less sword  of  invective  a  more  flashing 
edge. 

The  last  great  oration  of  Phillips  was 
the  discourse  at  Harvard  University  on 
the  centenary  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  It 
was  not  the  least  memorable  in  that  long 
series  of  memorable  orations  at  Harvard 
of  which  the  first  in  significance  was 
Buckminster's  in  1809,  and  the  most  fa- 
miliar was  Edward  Everett's  in  1824,  its 
stately  sentences  culminating  in  the  mag- 
nificent welcome  to  Lafayette  who  was 
present.  It  was  the  first  time  that  Phil- 
lips had  been  asked  by  his  Alma  Mater  to 
speak  at  one  of  her  festivals,  and  he 
rightly  comprehended  the  occasion.  He 
was  never  more  himself,  and  he  held  an 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  25 

audience  culled  from  many  colleges  and 
not  predisposed  to  admire,  in  shuddering 
delight  by  the  classic  charm  of  his  man- 
ner and  the  brilliancy  of  his  unsparing 
censure  of  educated  men  as  recreant  to 
political  progress.  The  orator  was  nearly 
seventy  years  old.  He  was  conscious 
that  he  should  never  speak  again  upon  a 
greater  occasion  nor  to  a  more  distin- 
guished audience,  and  as  his  discourse 
ended,  as  if  to  express  completely  the 
principle  of  his  own  life  and  of  the  cause 
to  which  it  had  been  devoted,  and  the 
spirit  which  alone  could  secure  the  happy 
future  of  his  country  if  it  was  to  justify 
the  hope  of  her  children,  he  repeated  the 
words  of  Lowell : 

"  New  occasions  teach  new  duties,  time  makes  ancient 

good  uncouth. 
They  must  upward  still  and  onward  who  would  keep 

abreast  of  truth. 

Lo !    before  us   gleam  her  camp   fires,  we  ourselves 
must  pilgrims  be, 
4 


26  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

Launch  our  Mayflower  and  steer  boldly  through  the 
desperate  winter  sea. 

Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal  with  the  Past's  blood- 
rusted  key." 

When  Lowell  wrote  the  lines  he  was 
twenty-five  years  old.  He  was  thorough- 
ly stirred  by  the  cause  which  Edmund 
Quincy  in  reply  to  Motley's  question, 
"  What  public  career  does  America  of- 
fer ?"  had  declared  to  be  "  the  noblest  in 
the  world."  But  Lowell  felt  that  he  was 
before  all  a  poet.  When  he  was  twenty- 
seven  he  wrote,  "  If  I  have  any  vocation 
it  is  the  making  of  verse.  When  I  take 
my  pen  for  that,  the  world  opens  itself  un- 
grudgingly before  me  ;  everything  seems 
clear  and  easy,  as  it  seems  sinking  to  the 
bottom  would  be,  as  one  leans  over  the 
edge  of  his  boat  in  one  of  those  dear 
coves  at  Fresh  Pond.  But  when  I  do 
prose  it  is  invita  Minerva.  I  feel  as  if  I 
were  wasting  time  and  keeping  back  my 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  27 

message.  My  true  place  is  to  serve  the 
cause  as  a  poet.  Then  my  heart  leaps  be- 
fore me  into  the  conflict."  Already  the 
musing  organist  had  ceased  to  dream,  and 
he  was  about  to  strike  a  chord  in  a 
strange  and  unexpected  key,  and  with  a 
force  to  which  the  public  conscience 
would  thrill  in  answer. 

Lowell  was  an  intense  New  Englander. 
There  is  no  finer  figure  of  the  higher 
Puritan  type.  The  New  England  soil 
from  which  he  sprang  wras  precious  to 
him.  The  New  England  legend,  the  New 
England  language,  New  England  charac- 
ter and  achievement,  were  all  his  delight 
and  familiar  study.  Nobody  who  could 
adequately  depict  the  Yankee  ever  knew 
him  as  Lowell  knew  him,  for  he  was  at 
heart  the  Yankee  that  he  drew.  The 
Yankee  early  became  the  distinctive  rep- 
resentative of  America.  He  is  the  Uncle 
Sam  of  comedy  and  caricature.  Even  the 


28  JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

sweet-souled  Irving  could  not  resist  the 
universal  laugh,  and  gave  it  fresh  occasion 
by  his  portrait  of  Ichabod  Crane.  Those 
who  preferred  the  cavalier  and  courtier 
as  a  national  type,  traced  the  Yankee's 
immediate  descent  from  the  snivelling, 
sanctimonious,  and  crafty  zealots  of  Crom- 
well's parliament.  Jack  Downing  and 
Sam  Slick,  the  coarser  farces  and  stories 
broadly  exaggerated  this  conception,  and, 
in  our  great  controversy  of  the  century, 
the  antislavery  movement  was  derided 
as  the  superserviceable,  sneaking  fanati- 
cism of  the  New  England  children  of 
Tribulation  Wholesome  and  Zeal-in-the- 
land-Busy,  whom  the  southern  sons  of 
gallant  cavaliers  and  gentlemen  would 
teach  better  morals  and  manners.  The 
Yankee  was  made  a  byword  of  scorn,  and 
identified  with  a  disturber  of  the  nation- 
al peace  and  the  enemy  of  the  glorious 
Union.  Many  a  responsible  citizen,  many 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  2g 

a  prosperous  merchant  in  New  York  and 
Boston  and  Philadelphia,  many  a  learned 
divine,  whose  honor  it  was  that  they  were 
Yankees,  felt  a  half-hearted  shame  in  the 
name,  and  grudged  the  part  played  by 
their  noses  in  the  conversation.  They 
seemed  perpetually  to  hear  a  voice  of  con- 
tempt saying,  "Thy  nose  bewrayeth  thee." 
This  was  the  figure  which,  with  the  in- 
stinct of  genius,  with  true  New  England 
pride  and  the  joy  of  conscious  power, 
Lowell  made  the  representative  of  liber- 
ty-'loving,  generous,  humane,  upright, 
wise,  conscientious,  indignant  America. 
He  did  not  abate  the  Yankee  a  jot  or  a 
tittle.  He  magnified  his  characteristic 
drawl,  his  good-natured  simplicity,  his 
provincial  inexperience.  But  he  revealed 
his  unbending  principle,  his  supreme  good- 
sense,  his  lofty  patriotism,  his  unquailing 
courage.  He  scattered  the  clouds  of 
hatred  and  ignorance  that  deformed  and 


30  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

caricatured  him,  and  showed  him  in  his 
daily  habit  as  he  lived,  the  true  and 
worthy  representative  of  America,  with 
mother  wit  preaching  the  gospel  of  Christ, 
and  in  plain  native  phrase  applying  it  to 
a  tremendous  public  exigency  in  Chris- 
tian America.  The  Yankee  dialect  of 
New  England,  like  the  Yankee  himself, 
had  become  a  jest  of  farce  and  extrava- 
ganza. But,  thoroughly  aroused,  Lowell 
grasped  it  as  lightly  as  Hercules  his  club, 
and  struck  a  deadly  blow  at  the  Hydra 
that  threatened  the  national  life.  Burns 
did  not  give  to  the  Scottish  tongue  a 
nobler  immortality  than  Lowell  to  the 
dialect  of  New  England. 

In  June,  1846,  the  first  Biglow  paper, 
which,  in  a  letter  written  at  the  time, 
Lowell  called  "  a  squib  of  mine,"  was  pub- 
lished in  the  Boston  Courier.  That  squib 
was  a  great  incident  both  in  the  history 
of  American  literature  and  politics.  The 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  31 

serious  tone  of  our  literature  from  its 
grave  colonial  beginning  had  been  al- 
most unbroken.  The  rollicking  laugh  of 
Knickerbocker  was  a  solitary  sound  in  our 
literary  air  until  the  gay  note  of  Holmes 
returned  a  merry  echo.  But  humor  as  a 
literary  force  in  political  discussion  was 
still  more  unknown,  and  in  the  fierce 
slavery  controversy  it  was  least  to  be  an- 
ticipated. Banter  in  so  stern  a  debate 
would  seem  to  be  blasphemy,  and  humor 
as  a  weapon  of  antislavery  warfare  was 
almost  inconceivable.  The  letters  of  Ma- 
jor Jack  Downing,  a  dozen  years  before 
the  Biglow  Papers,  were  merely  political 
extravaganza  to  raise  a  derisive  laugh. 
They  were  fun  of  a  day  and  forgotten. 
Lowell's  humor  was  of  another  kind.  It 
was  known  to  his  friends,  but  it  was  not 
a  characteristic  of  Lowell  the  author.  In 
his  early  books  there  is  no  sign  of  it.  It 
was  not  a  humorist  whom  the  good- 


32  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

natured  Willis  welcomed  in  his  airy  way, 
saying  that  posterity  would  know  him 
as  Russell  Lowell.  Willis  thought,  per' 
haps,  that  another  dainty  and  graceful 
trifler  had  entered  the  charmed  circle  of 
literature  that  pleases  but  not  inspires. 

But  suddenly,  and  for  the  first  time, 
the  absorbing  struggle  of  freedom  and 
slavery  for  control  of  the  Union  was  il- 
luminated by  a  humor  radiant  and  pierc- 
ing, which  broke  over  it  like  daylight,  and 
exposed  relentlessly  the  sophistry  and 
shame  of  the  slave  power.  No  speech,  no 
plea,  no  appeal  was  comparable  in  popu- 
lar and  permanent  effect  with  this  pitiless 
tempest  of  fire  and  hail,  in  the  form  of 
wit,  argument,  satire,  knowledge,  insight, 
learning,  common-sense,  and  patriotism. 
It  was  humor  of  the  purest  strain,  but 
humor  in  deadly  earnest.  In  its  course, 
as  in  that  of  a  cyclone,  it  swept  all  before 
it— the  press,  the  Church,  criticism,  schol- 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  33 

arship — and  it  bore  resistlessly  down  upon 
the  Mexican  War,  the  pleas  for  slavery, 
the  Congressional  debates,  the  conspic- 
uous public  men.  Its  contemptuous  scorn 
of  the  public  cowardice  that  acquiesced 
in  the  aggressions  of  the  slave  power 
startled  the  dormant  manhood  of  the 
North  and  of  the  country. 

"  The  North  hain't  no  kind  of  badness  with  nothin', 

An*  you've  no  idee  how  much  bother  it  saves, 
We  ain't  none  riled  by  their  frettin'  and  frotbin', 

We're  used  to  layin'  the  string  on  our  slaves, 
Sez  John  C  Calhoun,  sez  he. 
,   Sez  Mister  Foote, 

I  should  like  to  shoot 
The  holl  gang,  by  the  great  horn  spoon,  sez  he, 

"The  mass  ough'  to  labor  an'  we  lay  on  soffies, 

That's  the  reason  I  want  to  spread  Freedom's  aree, 
It  puts  all  the  cunningest  on  us  in  office, 
An*  reelizes  our  Maker's  orig'nal  idee, 
Sez  John  C.  Calhoun,  sez  he. 

That's  as  plain,  sez  Cass, 
As  that  some  one's  an  ass, 
It's  ez  clear  as  the  sun  is  at  noon,  sez  he. 
5 


34  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

"  Now  don't  go  to  say  I'm  the  friend  of  oppression, 
But   keep  all   your  spare   breath  for  coolin'  your 

broth; 

For  I  allers  hev  strove  (at  least  that's  my  impression) 
To  make  cussed  free  with  the  rights  of  the  North, 
Sez  John  C.  Calhoun,  sez  he. 

Yes,  sez  Davis  of  Miss, 
The  perfection  o'  bliss 
Is  in  skinning  that  same  old  coon,  sez  he." 

Such  lines,  as  with  a  stroke  of  light- 
ning, were  burned  into  the  hearts  and  con- 
science of  the  North.  Read  to-day,  they 
recall,  as  nothing  else  can  recall,  the  in- 
tensity of  the  feeling  which  swiftly  flamed 
into  civil  war. 

Apart  from  their  special  impulse  and 
influence,  the  Biglow  Papers  were  essen- 
tially and  purely  American.  It  is  some- 
times said  that  the  best  American  poetry 
is  only  English  poetry  written  on  this  side 
of  the  ocean.  But  the  Biglcnu  Papers  are 
as  distinctively  American  as  "Tarn  o'  Shan- 
ter  "  is  Scotch  or  the  "  Divine  Comedy  " 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  35 

Italian.  They  could  have  been  written 
nowhere  else  but  in  Yankee  New  England 
by  a  New  England  Yankee.  With  Uncle 
Toms  Cabin,  they  are  the  chief  literary 
memorial  of  the  contest — a  memorial 
which,  as  literature,  and  for  their  own  de- 
light, our  children's  children  will  read,  as 
we  read  to-day  the  satires  that  scourge 
the  long-vanished  Rome  which  Juvenal 
knew,  and  the  orations  of  Burke  that  dis- 
cuss long-perished  politics.  So  strong  was 
Lowell's  antislavery  ardor  that  he  proudly 
identified  himself  with  the  Abolitionists. 
Simultaneously  with  the  publication  of 
the  first  series  of  the  Biglow  Papers,  he 
became  a  corresponding  editor  with  Ed- 
mund Quincy  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Stand- 
ared,  the  organ  of  the  American  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  and  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend,  Sydney  Howard  Gay,  the  editor  of 
the  paper,  he  says  :  "  I  was  not  only  will- 
ing but  desirous  that  my  name  should 


36  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

appear,  because  I  scorned  to  be  indebted 
for  any  share  of  my  modicum  of  popular- 
ity to  my  abolitionism  without  incurring 
at  the  same  time  whatever  odium  might 
be  attached  to  a  complete  identification 
with  a  body  of  heroic  men  and  women 
whom  not  to  love  and  admire  would 
prove  me  to  be  unworthy  of  those  senti- 
ments, and  whose  superiors  in  all  that 
constitutes  true  manhood  and  woman- 
hood I  believe  never  existed." 

But  his  antislavery  ardor  was  far  from 
being  his  sole  and  absorbing  interest  and 
activity.  Lowell's  studies,  more  and  more 
various  and  incessant,  were  so  compre- 
hensive that  if  not  like  Bacon,  all  knowl- 
edge, yet  he  took  all  literature  for  his 
province,  and  in  1855  he  was  appointed 
to  the  chair  of  modern  languages  and 
belles-lettres  in  Harvard  University,  suc- 
ceeding Longfellow  and  Ticknor,  an  illus- 
trious group  of  American  scholars  which 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  37 

gives  to  that  chair  a  distinction  unparal- 
leled in  our  schools.  His  love  and  mastery 
of  books  were  extraordinary,  and  his  de- 
votion to  study  so  relentless,  that  in  those 
earlier  years  he  studied  sometimes  four- 
teen hours  in  the  day,  and  pored  over 
books  until  his  sight  seemed  to  desert 
him.  But  it  was  no  idle  or  evanescent 
reading.  Probably  no  American  student 
was  so  deeply  versed  in  the  old  French 
romance,  none  knew  Dante  and  the  Ital- 
ians more  profoundly ;  German  literature 
was  familiar  to  him,  and  perhaps  even 
Ticknor  in  his  own  domain  of  Spanish 
lore  was  not  more  a  master  than  Lowell. 
The  whole  range  of  English  literature, 
not  only  its  noble  Elizabethan  heights, 
but  a  delightful  realm  of  picturesque  and 
unfreqented  paths,  were  his  familiar  park 
of  pleasance.  Yet  he  was  not  a  scholarly 
recluse,  a  pedant,  or  a  bookworm.  The 
student  of  books  was  no  less  so  acute 


38  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

and  trained  an  observer  of  nature,  so  sym- 
pathetic a  friend  of  birds  and  flowers,  so 
sensitive  to  the  influences  and  aspects  of 
out-of-door  life,  that  as  Charles  Briggs 
with  singular  insight  said  that  he  was 
meant  for  a  politician,  so  Darwin  with 
frank  admiration  said  that  he  was  born 
to  be  a  naturalist.  He  was  as  much  the 
contented  companion  of  Izaak  Walton 
and  White  of  Selborne  as  of  Donne  or 
Calderon.  His  social  sympathies  were  no 
less  strong  than  his  fondness  for  study, 
and  he  was  the  most  fascinating  of  com- 
rades. His  extraordinary  knowledge, 
whether  of  out-door  or  of  in-door  deri- 
vation, and  the  racy  humor  in  which  his 
knowledge  was  fused,  overflowed  his  con- 
versation. There  is  no  historic  circle  of 
wits  and  scholars,  not  that  of  Beaumont 
and  Ben  Johnson  where,  haply,  Shakes- 
peare sat,  nor  Pope's,  nor  Dryden's,  nor 
Addison's,  nor  Dr.  Johnson's  Club,  nor 


JAMES    RUSSELL   LOWELL.  39 

that  of  Edinburgh  ;  nor  any  Parisian  salon 
or  German  study,  to  which  Lowell's  abun- 
dance would  not  have  contributed  a  gold- 
en drop  and  his  glancing  wit  a  glittering 
repartee.  It  was  not  of  reading,  merely, 
it  was  of  the  reading  of  a  man  of  Lowell's 
intellectual  power  and  resource  that  Ba- 
con said,  "  reading  maketh  a  full  man." 

He  had  said  in  1846  that  it  was  as  a 
poet  that  he  could  do  his  best  work.  But 
the  poetic  temperament  and  faculty  do 
not  exclude  prose,  and  like  Milton's  swain, 
"  he  touched  the  tender  stops  of  various 
quills."  The  young  poet  early  showed 
that  prose  would  be  as  obedient  a  familiar 
to  his  genius  as  the  tricksy  Ariel  of  verse. 
Racy  and  rich,  and  often  of  the  most  so- 
norous or  delicate  cadence,  it  is  still  the 
prose  of  a  poet  and  a  master  of  the  differ- 
ences of  form.  His  prose  indeed  is  often 
profoundly  poetic — that  is,  quick  with  im- 
agination, but  always  in  the  form  of  prose, 


40  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

not  of  poetry.  It  is  so  finely  compact  of 
illustration,  of  thought  and  learning,  of 
wit  and  fancy  and  permeating  humor, 
that  his  prose  page  sparkles  and  sways 
like  a  phosphorescent  sea.  "  Oblivion," 
he  says,  "  looks  in  the  face  of  the  Grecian 
muse  only  to  forget  her  errand."  And 
again  :  "  the  garners  of  Sicily  are  empty 
now,  but  the  bees  from  all  climes  still 
fetch  honey  from  the  tiny  garden-plot 
of  Theocritus."  Such  concentrated  sen- 
tences are  marvels  of  felicity,  and,  al- 
though unmetred,  are  as  exquisite  as 
songs. 

Charles  Emerson  said  of  Shakespeare, 
"  he  sat  above  this  hundred-handed  play 
of  his  imagination  pensive  and  conscious," 
and  so  Lowell  is  remembered  by  those 
who  knew  him  well.  Literature  was  his 
earliest  love  and  his  latest  delight,  and 
he  has  been  often  called  the  first  man  of 
letters  of  his  time.  The  phrase  is  vague, 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  41 

but  it  expresses  the  feeling  that  while  he 
was  a  poet  and  a  scholar  and  a  humor- 
ist and  a  critic,  he  was  something  else 
and  something  more.  The  feeling  is  per- 
fectly just.  Living  all  summer  by  the  sea, 
we  watch  with  fascinated  eyes  the  long- 
flowing  lines,  the  flash  and  gleam  of  mul- 
titudinous waters,  but  beneath  them  all 
is  the  mighty  movement  of  unfathomed 
ocean,  on  whose  surface  only  these  undu- 
lating splendors  play.  Literature,  whether 
in  prose  or  verse,  was  the  form  of  Lowell's 
activity,  but  its  master  impulse  was  not 
aesthetic  but  moral.  When  the  activities 
of  his  life  were  ended,  in  a  strain  of  clear 
and  tender  reminiscence  he  sang  : 


"I  sank  too  deep  in  the  soft -stuffed  repose, 
That  hears  but  rumors  of   earth's  wrongs  and  woes; 
Too  well  these  Capuas  could  my  muscles  waste, 
Not  void  of  toils,  but  toils  of  choice  and  taste. 
These  still  had  kept  me  could  T  but  have  quelled, 
The  Puritan  drop  that  in  my  veins  rebelled." 
6 


42  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

Literature  was  his  pursuit,  but  patriot- 
ism was  his  passion.  His  love  of  country 
was  that  of  a  lover  for  his  mistress.  He 
resented  the  least  imputation  upon  the 
ideal  America,  and  nothing  was  finer  than 
his  instinctive  scorn  for  the  pinchbeck 
patriotism  which"  brags  and  boasts  and 
swaggers,  insisting  that  bigness  is  great- 
ness, and  vulgarity  simplicity,  and  the  will 
of  a  majority  the  moral  law.  No  man 
perceived  more  shrewdly  the  American 
readiness  of  resource,  the  Yankee  good- 
nature, and  the  national  rectitude.  But 
he  was  not  satisfied  with  an  easy  stand- 
ard. To  him  the  best,  not  the  thriftiest, 
was  most  truly  American.  Lowell  held 
that  of  all  men  the  American  should  be 
master  of  his  boundless  material  re- 
sources, not  their  slave,  worthy  of  his  un- 
equalled opportunities,  not  the  syco- 
phant of  his  fellow  Americans  nor  the 
victim  of  national  conceit.  No  man  re- 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  43 

joiced  more  deeply  over  our  great  achieve- 
ments or  celebrated  them  with  ampler  or 
prouder  praise.  He  delighted  with  Yan- 
kee glee  in  our  inventive  genius  and  rest- 
less enterprise,  but  he  knew  that  we  did 
not  invent  the  great  muniments  of  liberty, 
trial  by  jury,  the  habeas  corpus,  constitu- 
tional restraint,  the  common  school,  of  all 
which  we  were  common  heirs  with  civil- 
ized Christendom.  He  knew  that  we  have 
Niagara  and  the  prairies  and  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  the  majestic  Mississippi ;  but 
he  knew  also  with  another  great  Ameri- 
can that 

"  "Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone. 
And  morning  opes  with  haste  her  lids 
To  gaze  upon  the  Pyramids." 

As  he  would  not  accept  a  vulgar  carica- 
ture of  the  New  Englander  as  a  Yankee, 
so  he  spurned  Captain  Bobadil  as  a  type 
of  the  American,  for  he  knew  that  a  na- 


44  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

tion  may  be  as  well-bred  among  nations 
as  a  gentleman  among  gentlemen,  and 
that  to  bully  weakness  or  to  cringe  to 
strength  are  equally  cowardly,  and  there- 
fore not  truly  American. 

Lowell's  loftiest  strain  is  inspired  by 
this  patriotic  ideal.  To  borrow  a  German 
phrase  from  modern  musical  criticism,  it 
is  the  leit  motif  which  is  constantly  heard 
in  the  poems  and  the  essays,  and  that  in- 
spiration reached  its  loftiest  expression, 
both  in  prose  and  poetry,  in  the  discourse 
on  Democracy  and  the  Commemoration 
ode.  The  genius  of  enlightened  Greece 
breathes  audibly  still  in  the  oration  of 
Pericles  on  the  Peloponnessian  dead. 
The  patriotic  heart  of  America  throbs 
forever  in  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  address. 
But  nowhere  in  literature  is  there  a  more 
magnificent  and  majestic  personification 
of  a  country  whose  name  is  sacred  to  its 
children,  nowhere  a  profounder  passion 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  45 

of  patriotic  loyalty,  than  in  the  closing 
lines  of  the  Commemoration  ode.  The 
American  whose  heart,  swayed  by  that 
lofty  music,  does  not  thrill  and  palpitate 
with  solemn  joy  and  high  resolve,  does 
not  yet  know  what  it  is  to  be  an  Ameri- 
can. 

Like  all  citizens  of  high  public  ideals, 
Lowell  was  inevitably  a  public  critic  and 
censor,  but  he  was  much  too  good  a  Yan- 
kee not  to  comprehend  the  practical  con- 
ditions of  political  life  in  this  country. 
No  man  understood  better  than  he  such 
truth  as  lies  in  John  Morley's  remark : 
"  Parties  are  a  field  where  action  is  a  long 
second  best,  and  where  the  choice  con- 
stantly lies  between  two  blunders."  He 
did  not  therefore  conclude  that  there  is 
no  alternative,  that  "naught  is  every- 
thing and  everything  is  naught."  But  he 
did  see  clearly  that  while  the  government 
of  a  republic  must  be  a  government  of 


46  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

party,  yet  that  independence  of  party  is 
much  more  vitally  essential  in  a  republic 
than  fidelity  to  party.  Party  is  a  servant 
of  the  people,  but  a  servant  who  is  foolish- 
ly permitted  by  his  master  to  assume 
sovereign  airs,  like  Christopher  Sly,  the 
tinker,  whom  the  Lord's  attendants  ob- 
sequiously salute  as  master : 

"  Look  how  thy  servants  do  attend  on  thee ; 
Each  in  his  office  ready  at  thy  beck." 

To  a  man  of  the  highest  public  spirit  like 
Lowell,  and  of  the  supreme  self-respect 
which  always  keeps  faith  with  itself,  no 
spectacle  is  sadder  than  that  of  intelli- 
gent, superior,  honest  public  men  pros- 
trating themselves  before  a  party,  profess- 
ing what  they  do  not  believe,  affecting 
what  they  do  not  feel,  from  abject  fear 
of  an  invisible  fetich,  a  chimera,  a  name, 
to  which  they  alone  give  reality  and  force, 
as  the  terrified  peasant  himself  made  the 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  47 

spectre  of  the  Brocken  before  which  he 
quailed.  The  last  great  patriotic  service 
of  Washington,  and  none  is  more  worthy 
of  enduring  commemoration  on  this  an- 
niversary, was  the  farewell  address  with 
its  strong  and  stern  warning  that  party 
government  may  become  a  ruthless  des- 
potism, and  that  a  majority  must  be 
watched  as  jealously  as  a  king. 

With  his  lofty  patriotism  and  his  ex- 
traordinary public  conscience,  Lowell  was 
distinctively  the  Independent  in  politics. 
He  was  an  American  and  a  republican 
citizen.  He  acted  with  parties  as  every 
citizen*  must  act  if  he  acts  at  all.  But  the 
notion  that  a  voter  is  a  traitor  to  one 
party  when  he  votes  with  another  was 
as  ludicrous  to  him  as  the  assertion 
that  it  is  treason  to  the  White  Star  steam- 
ers to  take  passage  in  a  Cunarder.  When 
he  would  know  his  public  duty,  Lowell 
turned  within,  not  without.  He  listened, 


48  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

not  for  the  roar  of  the  majority  in  the 
street,  but  for  the  still  small  voice  in  his 
own  breast.  For  while  the  method  of  re- 
publican government  is  party,  its  basis  is 
individual  conscience  and  common-sense. 
This  entire  political  independence  Lowell 
always  illustrated.  He  was  born  in  the 
last  days  of  New  England  Federalism. 
His  uncle,  John  Lowell,  was  a  leader  in 
the  long  and  bitter  Federalist  controversy 
with  John  Quincy  Adams.  The  Whig 
dynasty  succeeded  the  Federal  in  Massa- 
chusetts, but  Lowell's  first  public  interest 
was  the  antislavery  agitation,  and  he 
identified  himself  with  the  Abolitionists. 
He  retained,  however,  his  individual  view, 
and  did  not  sympathize  with  the  policy 
that  sought  the  dissolution  of  the  Union, 
and  which  refused  to  vote.  In  1850,  he 
says,  in  a  private  letter  to  his  friend  Gay, 
alluding  to  some  difference  of  opinion 
with  the  Antislavery  Society,  "  there  has 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  49 

never  been  a  oneness  of  sentiment,"  that 
is  to  say,  complete  identity,  "  between  me 
and  the  Society,"  and  a  passage  in  a  letter 
written  upon  election  day  in  November, 
1850,  illustrates  his  independent  position  : 
"  I  shall  vote  the  Union  ticket  (half  Free 
Soil,  half  Democratic),  not  from  any  love 
of  the  Democrats,  but  because  I  believe  it 
to  be  the  best  calculated  to  achieve  some 
practical  result.  It  is  a  great  object  to 
overturn  the  Whig  domination,  and  this 
seems  to  be  the  only  lever  to  pry  them  over 
with.  Yet  I  have  my  fears  that  if  we  get 
a  Democratic  governor  he  will  play  some 
trick  or  other.  Ttmeo  Danaos  et  dona 
ferentes,  if  you  will  pardon  stale  Latin  to 
Parson  Wilbur." 

This  election  is  memorable  because  it 
overthrew  the  Whig  domination  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  made  Charles  Sumner  the 
successor  of  Daniel  Webster  in  the  Sen- 
ate. It  restored  to  the  State  of  Samuel 


50  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

Adams  the  same  political  leadership  be- 
fore the  Civil  War  that  she  had  held  before 
the  Revolution.  The  Republican  party, 
with  whose  antislavery  impulse  Lowell 
was  in  full  accord,  arose  from  the  Whig 
ruins,  and  whether  in  a  party  or  out  of  a 
party,  he  was  himself  the  great  illustration 
of  the  political  independence  that  he  rep- 
resented and  maintained.  As  he  allowed 
no  church  or  sect  to  dictate  his  religious 
views  or  control  his  daily  conduct,  so  he 
permitted  no  party  to  direct  his  political 
action.  He  was  a  Whig,  an  Abolitionist, 
a  Republican,  a  Democrat,  according  to 
his  conception  of  the  public  exigency,  and 
never  as  a  partisan.  From  1863  to  1872 
he  was  joint  editor,  with  his  friend  Mr. 
Norton,  of  the  North  American  Review, 
and  he  wrote  often  of  public  affairs.  But 
his  papers  all  belong  to  the  higher  poli- 
tics, which  are  those  of  the  man  and  the 
citizen,  not  of  the  partisan,  a  distinction 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.  51 

which  may  be  traced  in  Burke's  greatest 
speeches,  where  it  is  easy  to  distinguish 
what  is  said  by  Burke,  the  wise  and  patri- 
otic Englishman,  for  such  he  really  was, 
from  what  is  said  by  the  Whig  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  Treasury  Bench. 

But  whatever  his  party  associations  and 
political  sympathies,  Lowell  was  at  heart 
and  by  temperament  conservative,  and 
his  patriotic  independence  in  our  poli- 
tics is  the  quality  which  is  always  uncon- 
sciously recognized  as  the  truly  conser- 
vative element  in  the  country.  In  the 
tumultuous  excitement  of  our  popular 
elections  the  real  appeal  on  both  sides  is 
not  to  party,  which  is  already  committed, 
but  to  those  citizens  who  are  still  open  to 
reason,  and  may  yet  be  persuaded.  In 
the  most  recent  serious  party  appeal,  the 
orator  said,  "above  all  things,  political 
fitness  should  lead  us  not  to  forget  that 
at  the  end  of  our  plans  we  must  meet  face 


52  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

to  face  at  the  polls  the  voters  of  the  land 
with  ballots  in  their  hands  demanding  as 
a  condition  of  the  support  of  our  party, 
fidelity  and  undivided  devotion  to  the 
cause  in  which  we  have  enlisted  them." 
This  recognizes  an  independent  tribunal 
which  judges  party.  It  implies  that  be- 
side the  host  who  march  under  the  party 
color  and  vote  at  the  party  command, 
there  are  citizens  who  may  or  may  not 
wear  a  party  uniform,  but  who  vote  only 
at  their  own  individual  command,  and 
who  give  the  victory.  They  may  be 
angrily  classified  as  political  Laodiceans, 
but  it  is  to  them  that  parties  appeal,  and 
rightly,  because  except  for  this  body  of 
citizens,  the  despotism  of  party  would  be 
absolute  and  the  republic  would  degener- 
ate into  a  mere  oligarchy  of  "  bosses." 

There  could  be  no  more  signal  tribute 
to  political  independence  than  that  which 
was  offered  to  Lowell  in  1876.  He  was  a 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL.  53 

Republican  elector,  and  the  result  of  the 
election  was  disputed.  A  peaceful  solu- 
tion of  the  difference  seemed  for  some 
months  to  be  doubtful,  although  the  con- 
stitution apparently  furnished  it,  for  if  an 
elector,  or  more  than  one,  should  differ 
from  his  party  and  exercise  his  express 
and  unquestionable  constitutional  right, 
in  strict  accord  with  the  constitutional 
intention,  the  threatened  result  might  be 
averted.  But  in  the  multitude  of  electors 
Lowell  alone  was  mentioned  as  one  who 
might  exercise  that  right.  The  suggest- 
ion was  at  once  indignantly  resented  as 
an  insult,  because  it  was  alleged  to  imply 
possible  bad  faith.  But  it  was  not  so  de- 
signed. It  indicated  that  Lowell  was  felt 
to  be  a  man  who,  should  he  think  it  to 
be  his  duty  under  the  indisputable  con- 
stitutional provision,  to  vote  differently 
from  the  expectation  of  his  party,  he 
would  certainly  do  it.  But  those  who 


54  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

made  the  suggestion  did  not  perceive 
that  he  could  not  feel  it  to  be  his  duty, 
because  nobody  saw  more  clearly  than  he 
than  an  unwritten  law  with  all  the  force 
of  honor  forbade.  The  constitutional  in- 
tention was  long  since  superseded  by  a 
custom  sanctioned  by  universal  approval 
which  makes  the  Presidential  elector  the 
merest  ministeral  agent  of  a  party,  and 
the  most  wholly  ceremonial  figure  in  our 
political  system. 

By  the  time  that  he  was  fifty  years  old 
Lowell's  conspicuous  literary  accomplish- 
ment and  poetic  genius,  with  his  political 
independence,  courage,  and  ability  had 
given  him  a  position  and  influence  unlike 
those  of  any  other  American,  and  when 
in  1877  he  was  appointed  Minister  to 
Spain,  and  in  1880  transferred  to  Eng- 
land, there  was  a  feeling  of  blended  pride 
and  satisfaction  that  his  country  would 
be  not  only  effectively,  but  nobly  repre- 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL.  55 

sented.  Mr.  Emerson  once  said  of  an 
English  minister,  "  he  is  a  charming  gen- 
tleman, but  he  does  not  represent  the 
England  that  I  know."  In  Lowell,  how- 
ever, no  man  in  the  world  who  honored 
America  and  believed  in  the  grandeur  of 
American  destiny  but  would  find  his  faith 
and  hope  confirmed.  To  give  your  best, 
says  the  oriental  proverb,  is  to  do  your 
utmost.  The  coming  of  such  a  man,  there- 
fore, was  the  highest  honor  that  America 
could  pay  to  England.  If  we  may  per- 
sonify America,  we  can  fancy  a  certain 
grim  humor  on  her  part  in  presenting 
this  son  of  hers  to  the  mother-country,  a 
sapling  of  the  older  oak  more  sinewy  and 
supple  than  the  parent  stock.  No  emi- 
nent American  has  blended  the  Cavalier 
and  the  Puritan  tradition,  the  romantic 
conservatism  and  the  wise  radicalism  of 
the  English  blood  in  a  finer  cosmopoli- 
tanism than  Lowell.  It  was  this  generous 


$6  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

comprehension  of  both  which  made  him 
peculiarly  and  intelligently  at  home  in 
England,  and  which  also  made  him  much 
more  than  his  Excellency  the  Ambassador 
of  American  literature  to  the  Court  of 
Shakespeare,  as  the  London  Spectator 
called  him  upon  his  arrival  in  London,  for 
it  made  him  the  representative  to  Eng- 
land of  an  American  scholarship,  a  wit, 
an  intellectual  resource,  a  complete  and 
splendid  accomplishment,  a  social  grace 
and  charm,  a  felicity  of  public  and  private 
speech,  and  a  weight  of  good  sense,  which 
pleasantly  challenged  England  to  a  con- 
tinuous and  friendly  bout  in  which  Amer- 
ica did  not  suffer. 

During  his  official  residence  in  Eng- 
land, Lowell  seemed  to  have  the  fitting 
word  for  every  occasion,  and  to  speak  it 
with  memorable  distinction.  If  a  me- 
morial of  Dean  Stanley  were  erected  in 
his  Chapter  House,  or  of  Fielding  at 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  57 

Taunton,  or  of  Coleridge  at  Westminster 
Abbey,  or  of  Gray  at  Cambridge,  the  de- 
sire of  literary  England  turned  instinc- 
tively to  Lowell  as  the  orator  whose  voice 
would  give  the  best  expression,  and  whose 
character  and  renown  the  greatest. dig- 
nity, to  the  hour.  In  Wordsworth's  Eng- 
land, as  President  of  the  Wordsworth 
Society,  he  spoke  of  the  poet  with  an  af- 
fectionate justice  which  makes  his  speech, 
with  the  earlier  essay,  the  finest  estimate 
of  Wordsworth's  genius  and  career  ;  and 
of  Don  Quixote  he  spoke  to  the  Work- 
ingman's  College  with  a  poetic  appre- 
ciation of  the  genius  of  Cervantes  and  a 
familiarity  with  Spanish  literature  which 
was  a  revelation  to  British  workmen.  Con- 
tinuously at  public  dinners,  with  consum- 
mate tact  and  singular  felicity,  he  spoke 
with  a  charm  that  seemed  to  disclose  a 
new  art  of  oratory.  He  did  not  decline 
even  political  speech,  but  of  course  in  no 


58  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

partisan  sense.  His  discourse  on  Democ- 
racy at  Birmingham,  in  October,  1884, 
was  not  only  an  event,  but  an  event  with- 
out precedent.  He  was  the  minister  of 
the  American  republic  to  the  British 
monarchy,  and,  as  that  minister,  publicly 
to  declare  in  England  the  most  radical 
democratic  principles  as  the  ultimate  log- 
ical result  of  the  British  Constitution, 
and  to  do  it  with  a  temper,  an  urbanity, 
a  moderation,  a  precision  of  statement, 
and  a  courteous  grace  of  humor,  which 
charmed  doubt  into  acquiescence  and 
amazement  into  unfeigned  admiration  and 
acknowledgment  of  a  great  service  to  po- 
litical thought  greatly  done — this  was  an 
event  unknown  in  the  annals  of  diplo- 
macy, and  this  is  what  Lowell  did  at 
Birmingham. 

No  American  orator  has  made  so  clear 
and  comprehensive  a  declaration  of  the 
essential  American  principle,  or  so  simple 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  59 

a  statement  of  its  ethical  character.  Yet 
not  a  word  of  this  republican  to  whom 
Algernon  Sydney  would  have  bowed,  and 
whom  Milton  would  have  blessed,  would 
have  jarred  the  tory  nerves  of  Sir  Roger 
de  Coverley,  although  no  English  radical 
was  ever  more  radical  than  he.  The 
frantic  French  democracy  of  '93,  gnash- 
ing its  teeth  in  the  face  of  royal  power, 
would  have  equality  and  fraternity  if 
every  man  were  guillotined  to  secure  it. 
The  American  Republic,  speaking  to  mo- 
narchical Europe  a  century  later  by  the 
same  voice  with  which  Sir  Launfal  had 
shown  the  identity  of  Christianity  with 
human  sympathy  and  succor,  set  forth  in 
the  address  at  Birmingham  the  truth  that 
democracy  is  simply  the  practical  ap- 
plication of  moral  principle  to  politics. 
There  were  many  and  great  services  in 
Lowell's  life,  but  none  of  them  all  seem 
to  me  more  characteristic  of  the  man 


60  JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

than  when,  holding  the  commission  of  his 
country  and  in  his  own  person  represent- 
ing its  noblest  character,  standing  upon 
soil  sacred  to  him  by  reverend  and  ro- 
mantic tradition,  his  American  heart  loyal 
to  the  English  impulse  which  is  the  im- 
pulse of  constitutional  liberty,  for  one 
memorable  moment  he  made  monarch- 
ical England  feel  for  republican  America 
the  same  affectionate  admiration  that  she 
felt  for  him,  the  republican  American. 
His  last  official  words  in  England  show 
the  reciprocal  feeling:  "While  I  came 
here  as  a  far-off  cousin,"  he  said,  "  I  feel 
that  you  are  sending  me  away  as  some- 
thing like  a  brother."  He  died  :  the  poet, 
the  scholar,  the  critic,  the  public  coun- 
sellor, the  ambassador,  the  patriot,  and 
the  sorrowing  voice  of  the  English  lau- 
reate and  of  the  English  Queen,  the  high- 
est voices  of  English  literature  and  po- 
litical power,  mingling  with  the  universal 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL.  6l 

voice  of  his  own  country,  showed  how 
instinctively  and  surely  the  true  Amer- 
ican, faithful  to  the  spirit  of  Washington 
and  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  reconciles  and 
not  exasperates  international  feeling. 

So  varied,  so  full,  and  fair  is  the  story 
of  Lowell's  life,  and  such  services  to  the 
mind  and  heart  and  character  of  his 
country  we  commemorate  on  this  hal- 
lowed day.  In  the  golden  morning  of 
our  literature  and  national  life  there  is 
no  more  fascinating  and  inspiring  figure. 
His  literary  achievement,  his  patriotic 
distinction,  and  his  ennobling  influence 
upon  the  character  and  lives  of  generous 
American  youth,  gave  him  at  last  power 
to  speak  with  more  authority  than  any 
living  American  for  the  intellect  and  con- 
science of  America.  Upon  those  who 
knew  him  well,  so  profound  was  the  im- 
pression of  his  resource  and  power  that 
their  words  must  seem  to  be  mere  eulo- 


62  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

gy.  All  that  he  did  was  but  the  hint  of 
this  superb  affluence,  this  comprehen- 
sive grasp ;  the  overflow  of  an  exhaustless 
supply,  so  that  it  seemed  to  be  only  inci- 
dental, not  his  life's  business.  Even  his 
literary  production  was  impromptu.  "  Sir 
Launfal  "  was  the  work  of  two  days.  The 
"  Fable  for  Critics  "  was  an  amusement 
amid  severer  studies.  The  discourse  on 
Democracy  was  largely  written  upon  the 
way  to  Birmingham,  Of  no  man  could 
it  be  said  more  truly  that 

"  Half  his  strength  he  put  not  forth." 

But  that  must  be  always  the  impression 
of  men  of  so  large  a  mould  and  of  such 
public  service  that  they  may  be  properly 
commemorated  on  this  anniversary.  Like 
mountain  summits,  bright  with  sunrise, 
that  announce  the  day,  such  Americans 
are  harbingers  of  the  future  which  shall 
justify  our  faith,  and  fulfil  the  promise  of 


JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.  63 

America  to  mankind.  In  our  splendid 
statistics  of  territorial  extension,  of  the 
swift  civilization  of  the  Western  world, 
of  the  miracles  of  our  material  invention  : 
in  that  vast  and  smiling  landscape,  the 
home  of  a  powerful  and  peaceful  people, 
humming  with  industry  and  enterprise, 
rich  with  the  charm  of  every  climate  from 
Katahdin  that  hears  the  distant  roar  of 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Golden  Gate  through 
which  the  soft  Pacific  sighs,  and  in  every 
form  of  visible  prosperity,  we  see  the  re- 
splendent harvest  of  the  mighty  sowing, 
two  hundred  years  ago,  of  the  new  conti- 
nent with  the  sifted  grain  of  the  old.  But 
this  is  not  the  picture  of  national  great- 
ness, it  is  only  its  glittering  frame.  In- 
tellectual excellence,  noble  character,  pub- 
lic probity,  lofty  ideals,  art,  literature, 
honest  politics,  righteous  laws,  conscien- 
tious labor,  public  spirit,  social  justice, 
the  stern,  self-criticising  patriotism  which 


64  JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

fosters  only  what  is  worthy  of  an  enlight- 
ened people,  not  what  is  unworthy — such 
qualities  and  achievements,  and  such 
alone,  measure  the  greatness  of  a  state, 
and  those  who  illustrate  them  are  great 
citizens.  They  are  the  men  whose  lives 
are  a  glorious  service  and  whose  memo- 
ries are  a  benediction.  Among  that  great 
company  of  patriots  let  me  to-day,  rever- 
ently and  gratefully,  blend  the  name  of 
Lowell  with  that  of  Washington. 


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